March i, 1890,] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 601 
DB ; TRIMEN ON THE VEYANGODA 
COOONUT TROUBLE. 
Peradeniya, Jan. 27th. 
You will be no doubt anxious to hear what I have 
done with the material I took from your estate on 
my visit there recently. 
I have carefully examined the specimens of diseased 
leaves microscopically. 
The breaking down and death of the tissues of the 
leaf in the diseased patches is well seen to be a 
gradual process of deoay, but I have failed to detect, 
at any stage, the presence of a parasitic fungus as a 
cause of this destruction. 
I am thus still of opinion that the partial or com- 
plete death of the leaves is due to some cause affect- 
ing the general health of the tree, and not to local 
injury caused by a vegetable leaf-parasite. I saw no 
sucking insects, either on my visit, or among those 
caught by your coolies ; but I still think that, in at 
all events many cases, the morbid processes are set 
going locally by the punctures made by minute bugs. 
So far as it goes, I think you may consider this 
opinion a favourable one. There is, so fur as I can 
see, no reason to suppose the disease infectious or 
oommunicable from tree to tree, and thus likely to 
spread. 
Not knowing the cause, I am unable to suggest any 
remedy, beyond careful atteution to the general prin- 
ciples of cultivation and a liberal treatment of the trees. 
— I am, yours faithfully, Henry Tbimen. 
— Local " Examiner." 
4 
BUMPER CROPS IN BURMA. 
The area under rice cultivation in the ten chief 
rice-producing districts of Lower Burma ia now 
estimated at 3,813,294 acres, or 182,214 acres more 
than the area under cultivation in 1888, and 5,154 
aores more than was estimated last month. It is 
reported that (taking 16 annas as an ordinary yield 
per cultivated acre) there is a 20-anna crop in 
two districts, an 18-anna crop in one district, a 
17 anna crop in four districts, a 16-anna crop in 
two districts, and a 15-anna crop in one district. 
It is estimated that there will be available for export 
1,260,000 tons of cargo rioe including what will be 
required for Upper Burma. In Upper Burma also 
^6 orops are generally good.— 31. Mail, Feb. 1st. 
+ 
A NEW COFFEE COMPANY IN THE STRAITS. 
The prospectus of the " Castlewood Planting 
Company, Limited," which will be found in another 
column, is a wholesome change from the various 
mining sohemes which have held the field for the 
last few years. The encouragement of agriculture 
in the Malay Peninsula is certainly of equal im- 
portance with that of mining, and is a steadier 
form of industrial enterprise ; and the particular 
enterprise now under review, while necessarily 
subject to the risks which attend agriculture every- 
where, has at least the advantage of a well- 
established and honest basis. Mr. Larken's "house 
of Castlewood" is well known to those Singapore 
people who visit Johore, and the considerable 
aoreage of coffee under cultivation has always 
been regarded as one of the most prudently 
managed of Malaysian agricultural estates, while 
the owner's reputation stands deservedly high both 
with Europeans, with Asiatics, and with H. H. the 
Sultan of Johore. While, therefore, it is altogether 
beyond our sphere to assume that the coffee plant 
will always flourish, or that the price of the bean 
will always remain at its present level, or that 
Castlewood will always to well managed, it can be ad" 
vanced from our own knowledge, supported by general 
repute, that the property proposed to bo acquired 
is at present ia good oondition, ia advantageously 
situated for transport, and is held in such esteem 
by the Javanese that free labour at low rates has 
always been had to the full extent of the Castle- 
wood requirements, even when other estates were 
quite unable to get that, and had to rely on costly and 
unsatisfactory Indian immigrants. 
It will be s een that of the proposed $150,000 
of capital the vendor takes $50,000 in cash and 
$40,000 in shares, and that for four years the 
latter are " deferred " in such a manner that 
they will not get any return until the ordinary 
shareholders have received for four years ten per 
cent per annum, and until there is a reserve 
fund of $15,000. Now in considering this defer- 
ring of shares, it must be remembered that the cash 
consideration of $50,000 is equal to about $275 
per acre on the quantity of land in full cultivation 
a price at which, with good luck, a skilled person 
should be able to plant and maintain until fruiting 
point a coffee estate, including in the chargi a 
the cost of necessary buildings. What Mr. Larken 
takes in deferred shares is therefore not so much 
his actual outlay (which we may assume to be 
returned to him in cash), but rather the value 
placed on his rights over eighteen hundred acres 
of seleoted land, on his fortune in having a 
favourable situation and on the skill which has 
enabled him to do well with a small quantity 
of land in face of many difficulties, and which 
gives the probability of being able to do better with 
a large area to be opened free from those troubles 
which always mark the first stages of planting 
in any locality. It seems a reasonable bargain, 
and as the calculations submitted in the pros- 
pectus are based on what seems a low estimate of the 
yield of well- cared for and healthy coffee trees, 
and on a price much below what merchants anti- 
cipate for the produce, it is probable that the 
deferring of the vendors' shares will not prevent 
them from obtaining as much return as the others, 
a hope which, if realised, would mean not only 
much assurance of success to the Castlewood 
Company, but very great encouragement to the 
cultivation of coffee in the Peninsula. In faot if 
the Castlewood Company realises the prospects held 
out— an immediate ten per cent, with hopes of a 
very great increase— it may be assumed that the 
well-directed cultivation of coffee in the Malay 
Peninsula is one of the most hopeful forms of 
Eastern planting. 
It is only proper to add that in planting almost 
everything depends on management. Not every, 
thing ; for if coffee had remained at fifteen or 
sixteen dollars a picul (the price when Castle- 
wood was opened), the most oareful management 
in the world oould not have assured more than a 
very moderate return, while {conversely it follows 
that the planter who has seen in a few years the 
selling price of his product double itself, without 
increase in the cost of production, is enjoying an 
" unearned increment " of a similiar kind to 
that which has set the whole tribe of unthinking 
Radicals howling around the ground landlords of 
London. But admitting that the prospects of 
highly remunerative coffee planting in Malaysia 
are based in the first place on a great and ap- 
parently lasting rise of price, it still remains that 
no price would bo remunerative under bad 
management. If, then, the Castlewood Company is 
successfully floated, it will behove the directors 
to remember that the present vendor and future 
manager should not remain, the sole stay of the 
enterprise. An advenUre based on the skill and 
prudence of one man is always in danger, and it 
is a charaoteristio of too many of the planting and 
mining adventures of the East that whilo spending 
freely on many things, they grudge to provide the 
